In which we blacken someone's name

Last Sunday after we wrote our blog post Rea received her patriarchal blessing. The patriarch was not far away from our home, and she received a nice blessing. The patriarch's wife acted as a stenographer, and they delivered a text version of it to our house a few days ago, so she now can read it when she wants to.

The Dalyias came over on Monday and the kids all played. They had a lot of fun and apparently ate a lot of mints as well.

Wednesday was a very busy day. In the morning Alison and the kids went to the Poulson's house and then Mike took Sara to her acting class. Next, Rea went to the temple open house, and Alison took the kids to her presidency meeting with her, and then Mike took Sara back to her activity and grabbed the kids. Here's hoping that we can avoid that busy a day for at least a few weeks.

Gideon had a lot of fun at Sullivan's birthday party on Thursday. They jumped on a trampoline, ate pie, played a lot of games, and ran around, so it sounds like it was a success.

On Friday we were invited over to the Browns house for their Christmas party. They had pizza and cocoa (Samoan and otherwise), and we played Risk. Timmy has been really wanting to try Risk out, and Mike never owned a copy as an adult, so he (Timmy) was never able to play it. Mike found a copy at the DI, and conscripted everyone to play at the party, so we played it pretty much the whole time.

Mike (in case any of you don't know him) is pretty much a board game snob, and dislikes Risk, because it is not actually a good game. That being said, he was willing to play with Timmy, so that he could learn why that was the case. After playing one game, Timmy has indicated that he doesn't want to play Risk again

On Saturday was cousin day at Grandma Julie's house. The kids report that they had a fun time, but the only thing that they remember having done is trading pokemon cards and playing with Aelfric, so I guess that that is all that they did. Mike and Alison got a lot of work done getting ready for Christmas, so it was nice that the kids could be gone all day - even if they don't really remember what they did.

Finally, we have been reading Howl's moving castle again as a family, and enjoying it immensely.